RIFLE — The hummingbirds have gone silent on Moe Disney’s 32 acres in Garfield County. Disney bought the land in 2018 to settle down in retirement, where more than 100 hummingbirds have spent their summers enjoying nine birdfeeders on the property.
On Sunday, smoke from the Lee fire had gotten so bad that Disney, who is the primary caretaker for her disabled husband, realized they needed to leave their home.
The area where the property sits is currently in ready status of the “ready, set, go” system incident commanders have used for evacuations since lightning sparked the fire Aug. 2. When she returned to the property Tuesday to care for her chickens, she saw most of the hummingbird feeders, which she often refills three times a day, were still full.
“I hope they’ve migrated away, and I don’t start finding them dead on the ground,” Disney said.
As she waits in the hotel room she’s struggling to pay for on a fixed income, Disney has grown increasingly worried about her home, 7 miles outside of Rifle on Colorado 13. Now, the highway that takes drivers from Meeker to Rifle has become one of the last line of defense between the fifth-largest fire in Colorado history and her home.
As the fire continues to push southward, and with weather conditions ripe for growth, CO 13 has remained the fire’s eastern border. To keep the fire from gaining momentum, and to protect structures in unincorporated Garfield County and the town of Rifle, crews are working around the clock, determined to hold the line.
Seeing “unprecedented fire behavior”
As of Thursday morning, the Lee fire had grown to 127,107 acres in Rio Blanco County with containment at just 3%, down from 7% Sunday. Officials said Thursday that at least five houses and 15 outbuildings have been destroyed by the blaze and the Elk Fire east of Meeker that has burned 14,518 and is at 75% containment.
On the Lee fire’s southwestern flank, roughly 2,000 acres of the fire has crossed Rio Blanco County Road 5, another important fire line, and has reached the border of Garfield County.
Typically, fires fueled by pinyon-juniper and sagebrush, which populates the fire’s area, run hard and fast with the wind, then shut down as the wind dies down, according to Jeramy Dietz, the operations section chief for the Rocky Mountain Complex Incident Management team. He says those types of fires typically take a couple of days to wrap up. The Lee fire is different.
“Whereas this one, with how dry the fuels are, and then all the red flag warnings and drought conditions, we’re seeing kind of some unprecedented fire behavior in that fuel model, which is the reason why it’s getting up into the top-five largest fires,” Dietz said.
Helicopters carrying water buckets to work the Lee fire leave the Rifle airport Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2025, to go back to the fire, which is burning between Rifle and Meeker in northwestern Colorado. (Lincoln Roch, Special to The Colorado Sun)The region has received less than 5% of normal precipitation, setting up extreme drought conditions for the fire that ignited from lightning Aug. 2. Over the past week, weather has hindered containment efforts. Friday saw the development of a pyrocumulus cloud, soaring above 30,000 feet and creating its own weather system.
Smoke has also hindered air operations for several days. While helicopters have continuously operated, fixed-winged plane drops have been largely grounded.
“They have to have the right clean air to be able to fly and to be able to utilize retardant in there,” Dietz said.
Anticipated extreme fire behavior, and plume growth, did not occur Wednesday. But, a similar forecast for Thursday of temperatures in the 80s to 90s, humidity near single digits and the potential for isolated thunderstorms will bring another critical fire day.
The Lee fire ranks as the fifth-largest wildfire in state history behind the Cameron Peak (208,913 acres), East Troublesome (193,812) and Pine Gulch (139,007) fires all in 2020 and the Hayman fire (137,760) in 2002.
Fire crews go on offensive
Denver Health paramedic Logan Opalinski is one of 1,284 personnel fighting the fire as of Wednesday. Thanks to a light fire season around the country, the response has benefited from larger than normal staffing, with crews from every Western state, and as far as Alaska and North Carolina.
Since Opalinski arrived at the Incident command camp in Meeker last week, he’s seen the fire double. While he says morale remains high, he worries about the challenge of protecting structures if the fire continues south.
“I think the northern perimeter of the fire, where it started off Colorado 64, is further away from the southern tip of the fire than Rifle is,” Opalinski said. “I don’t think the workload is the troublesome part. I think the fear is it approaches into Rifle.”
On Tuesday, a secondary camp was opened in Rifle Gap State Park with 200 firefighters to allow for shortened trip times to the front lines. On his overnight shifts, Opalinski has primarily worked near the fire’s southern edge in the Colorado 13 corridor. He said crews are patrolling it 24/7 to make sure the line holds.
A helicopter pilot working the Lee fire in northwestern Colorado talks with a fire official at the Rifle airport Aug. 13, 2025. (Lincoln Roch, Special to The Colorado Sun)But the fire has shown an ability to jump fire lines and make large runs. So, a significant amount of resources, including heavy equipment like bulldozers, are being used to prepare for the possibility of the fire crossing major breaks like Colorado 13.
“When we respond to an incident like this that is growing at a rapid pace, we build a big box,” said Kristie Thompson, Rocky Mountain Incident Command team public information officer. “We start building some contingency lines further away from that active fire head, and then as days progress, and if we have lower activity, we go as close in as we can to be able to stop the progression.”
As the firefight approaches the weekend, incident commanders, firefighters on the front lines, and evacuees in hotel rooms are all holding out hope for a 60% chance of rain Friday. But even if it doesn’t come, Dietz said the increased resources have allowed for crews to go on the offensive.
“We’re feeling good at this point as far as where it’s headed and our opportunities to grab it,” Dietz said.
Officials will hold a public meeting at 7 p.m. Thursday in Rifle at the Colorado Mountain College campus.
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